Mus 4 Final Study Guide

1. Opera Buffa: As opposed to opera seria(serious Italian opera) , opera buffa(comic Italian
Opera) refers to real life characters and
stories.
-Baroque opera seria employs aria and
recitative.
-In addition to these two, Classical opera buffa
employs ensemble
-Ensemble is sung by two or more people. It is
a scene written for a group of performers
2. Beethoven as a transitional figure between Classiciam and Romanticism
-Following his precedents Haydn and Mozart, Beethoven wrote
symphonies in the classical forms.
-He went to Vienna to work with Haydn during his twenties.
-During these years, he wrote mostly sonatas and piano trios for
domestic, private concerts.
-He became popular as an expressive composer who was inclined to
rebel against the simple, gradual, and pleasing variety of the
classical tradition. Instead he was asserting his individual voice,
more as an artistic virtuoso and improviser.
3. Themes of Romanticism
Escapism from Reality: Even though the natural and socially realistic
expression of life in art was celebrated by the intellectuals of the
Enlightenment (i.e. Rousseau), the newly emerging mechanical tasks of
the 19th century as a result of the Industrial Revolution led to draining
and dark effects on human beings.
The Cult of Individual Will and Passion: In this context everyday life
seemed banal, and the individual passion was considered as the only
way to cope with such banality.
Celebration of Revolution: The actual social landmarks, first French
Revolution of the 18th Century, then the Industrial Revolution of the
19th Century, generated the social awareness and political engagement
of the artists and musicians, and encouraged the idea of revolt.
The Cult of the Supernatural: This goes along with the cult of
individual passion and will to escape from mundane everyday life.
Novelists (Mary Shelley, Frankenstein), artists (Henry Fuseli, Nightmare),
and composers (Wagner, The Flying Dutchman) created fictitious and
fantastic characters, images, sound universe. (p. 242).
4. Stylistic Features of Romanticism
Stylistic Features of Romantic Music: personal, eccentric, dramatic
almost heroic.
Rhythm: Rubato (that is flexible rhythm, allowing individual
expressivity)
Melody: Emotional, climactic, sounds more irregular (in line with the
flexible rhythm)
Harmony: Inventions of new chords, chromaticism, which helped
composers to express variety of emotions in a more dramatic fashion

Tone Color: Expanded and Multicolored with the new groupings of

instruments in the orchestra, which allowed composers to blend
different tone colors and create dense sounds.
Formal Concerns:
More than the outer architecture of the
pieces, inner form was emphasized
Breaking with classical forms was celebrated.
Individual spontaneity was allowed.
5. New genres in Romanticism
Lied: a particular type of german song
-accompanied by piano alone
- text is usually Romantic poem
-Mood: singer and pianist seem to be sharing emotional insight with just you rather than entire
audience
Song cycle: group of songs with a common poetic theme or actual story connecting all the poems
-extended fagile expression of the lied into more larger impressive unit
Character pieces: short piano piece. Each portays some mood or character
Nocturnes: night pieces
Program Symphonies: entire symphonies with programs spelled out movement by movement
6. New musical ideas and concepts:
Ide fixe:A fixed idea, an obsession, term used by Berlioz for a recurring theme used in all the
movements of one of his program symphonies.
Leitmotiv: Leading motive in Wagners operas
Musical motive that is associated
with a particular character, thing, or idea
Gesamtkunstwerk: Total work of art, which
raised the importance of the orchestra, the
declamation of the text, acting as well as
singing, set design, costumes, lighting design
etc.
7. Themes of Romantic Opera:
Escapism from Reality
The Cult of Individual Will and
Passion
Celebration of Revolution
The Cult of the Supernatural
8. Late Romantic Tendencies:
Post French Revolution Climate:
The failure of the idea of freedom
The year of 1848 as a larger revolution (including
different parties of struggle) in Europe
Romanticism as nostalgia
Realism (in line with novelists like Zola and

Dickens, and with realistic painters)

Wagners operas in this context:
psychological realism
emotional escape from the frustrations of
social reality
9. Late Romantic Program Music (Tchaikovski)
The Origins of Overture Fantasy:
Program Music
Late Romantic Program Music
Symphonic Poem (a one movement orchestral
composition with a program in a free musical
form; a term suggested by composer Franz List
to emphasize musics expressive power to
indicate an idea, a character, a story etc.)p.
295.
Instead of the word symphonic poem, Tchaikovsky
used overture fantasy, which are longer pieces.
10. Nationalism in Music
the foundation of modern nation state,
as an emerging 19th century European
phenomenon in the midst of
revolutionary climate.
the love of the country, patriotism
the struggle of the countries for
national independence
The Reflection of Political Nationalism on
Music:
Incorporation of folk melodies.
Programs based on national themes,
histories.
The interest in developing local musical styles
Brahms
11. Modernism In Music
affected by avant-garde art movements such as
impressionism, symbolism, expressionism, futurism,
dadaism, bauhaus, cubism.
avant-garde: literally the term is a military term,
vanguard, meaning the front line. as a term of
aesthetics, it indicates the shock of the new and
radical.
affected by new landscapes and cultural geographies
Impressionism (originated in 1870):
Reacts against the Romanticisms literal
representation and overemotional expression.
Reflects the detailed nuances of everyday life
Introduces an uncertain or ambiguous form of

images, with elaborate lighting

Symbolism (as a movement originated in 1886,
with the symbolist manifesto in poetry):
Similar to impressionism, critiques the
literal representation of Romanticism.
Instead uses cynical, more ambiguous,
open and endlessly suggestive
expression.
Expressionism (originated in 1912, before
WW1 in Germany).
uses distorted and grotesque imagery
and images
highlights the quality of abstraction
deals with the notion of psychological
realism, of expressing the repressed
aspirations of the psyche.
Cubism (initiated by Pablo Picasso and
Georges Braque, in 1907, in France):
uses fragmented images
breaks up and reassembles the objects
highlights abstraction, and attempts to
indicate multiple perspectives for
looking at an image.
12. How did modernism change musical aspects
change in tone color and in the use of
musical time
more ambiguous, fragmented dissonant,
and rhythmically complex melodies
more abstraction, much less literal
representation.
13. The American Scene in the late 19th and early 20th Century look at Ives
The mid 19th century was however difficult
for the country, due to the:
Civil war
Assassination of President Lincoln
Reconstruction era
One can argue that the compound effect of this
social period contributed to the invention of American
music.
In that respect, one of the most influential composers
was Czech composer, Antonin Dvorak. He came to the
States during the 1890s, and supervised the National
Conservatory of Music in NYC. Coming from Europe
and involved in the trend of nationalism himself, he

encouraged his students to found American music by

incorporating folk tunes with the classical forms.
14. Core ideas and newly emerging genres followed during the second half of the 20 th century.
performance and turning everyone into a
performer (making the audience active)
variety theatre: anti-traditional, open to
discoveries, using simple means, responding
to its physical and social surrounding
synthetic theatre and simultaneity of events:
compressing the various aspects of life
art of noise and noise music: initiated by
painter Russolo in 1912, used machine
sounds
mechanical movements
Dadaism: The literary and art movement that
grew in Zurich, Cabaret Voltaire, between
the years 1917-20.
Dada is a flexible and workable word. It
means various things in different languages
(i.e. yes in Rumanian, rocking horse in French,
foolish innocence, etc. Goldberg, 62)

1. Beethovens 5th Symphony in C Minor

Written in the symphonic form, the piece includes 4 movements.
The first two movements (moderate fast; slow); and the fourth
movement (very fast) are written in sonata form.
written in sonata form, these movements consist of
exposition, development and recapitulation, and coda
(optional).
The third movements form is considered Scherzo
Scherzo means a fast, rushing movement in triple meter
inherited from minuet (p.231). In Italian, scherzo means
joke. Given that minuet form was popular during the
monarch of Louis the 14th, Beethoven wanted to come up
with a new form that would mock the minuet, yet still
emphasize the rhythmic drive (231).
Some Characteristics of the 5th Symphony:
rhythmic drive
motivic consistency
dramatic progression
more sudden dynamics, more expressive
Dichterliebe R. Schumann
Genre: Song cycle?

Fantastic Symphony V. Berlioz

Unlike classical symphony, it has 5 movements
Each movement has a particular theme and mood.
The movements together present a plot and a set of
dramatic actions.
Expanded tone color
Idee Fixe (Fixed Idea: Recurring melody).
Rhythm: Rubato
that is flexible rhythm, allowing individual expressivity.
Melody:
Emotional ,climactic, sounds more irregular (in line with the
flexible rhythm)
Harmony:
Inventions of new chords, chromaticism, All helped composers to express
variety of emotions in a more dramatic fashion.
Tone Color:
Expanded
Multicolored
With the new groupings of instruments in
the orchestra (p. 248)
All allowed composers to blend different
tone colors and create dense sounds.
Aida ACT IV scene ii, Verdi
-Musical Aspects:
Recitative, Arioso and Duets sung in Bel Canto
style.
Long, clear, tuneful melodies accompanied by a
rich orchestra sound
Exotic (characteristic of a foreign place) sounds:
Verdi thought that he occasionally made the piece
Egyptian sounding (280). The duo, Track 12, is
considered an example to that (281).
The Vakjyrie Act I, scene I, Wagner
Musical aspects of the Valkyrie:
Orchestra carries the leitmotiv
Leitmotiv is appearing in different versions
Unlike Verdis melodies, here the melodies are
harder to follow, less tuneful, more chromatic.
The text is declaimed in a freer form, more
like recitative.A
Pictures at an Exhibition Musorgsky
The piece refers to an exhibit of pictures by a
painter friend of Mussorgsky. The music describes
the mood of the visitor of the exhibition, and the
pictures.

Musical Aspects: Use of free variations, abrupt

rhythmic interruptions and dissonant harmonies.
Listening Example: Track 32, Gnomus, which is a
picture of Russian folk-art nutcracker (p.300).A
Vionin Concerto in D,III, Brahms
Musical Aspects: Use of classical tradition
and forms, but also lyrical tunes and
expressive climactic sections.
Related Theme: Renewal of Classicism in line
with the tendency towards Realism
Symphony No I Funeral March, Mahler
Some musical aspects: Using Imitative
counterpoint; not blending the tone colors of
instruments to increase the density of the
sound universe but to create contrasting effects
Related Theme: Nostalgia for Romanticism
Clouds Debussy
subtle orchestral effects; each individual
instrument serves the overall quality of
sound.
light sonorities, shades of sound, degrees of
tone colors.
vague rhythm
more fluid and open-ended melodies
expanded tonalities
pentatonic scale (inspired by gamelan music)
pentatonic scale: a musical scale with five notes without
semitones
example of pentatonic scale: F G A C D F
not much dramatic or climactic expression of emotion
expanded harmonies, which does not settle on a home
pitch (the use of parallel chords -- chords that consist
of the same intervals -- and nonfunctional harmony).
The Rite of Spring, Part I Stravinsky
Musical Aspects of The Rite of Spring
Russian folk tunes in fragments:
Dissonant harmonies
Unpredictable rhythms; irregular accents
Rhythmic and chordal repetitions
Violent, sharp and punctuated motifs
(implying the barbaric act)
Unlike romantic composers melodies, and
unlike Debussys shady melodies, Stravinskys
melodic phrases are fragmented and abrupt.

Pierrot Lunaire, Schoenburg

The piece is a song cycle, based on poems by symbolist
poet Albert Giraud. The main character of the poems,
Pierrot is a clown, who is portrayed as lunar with
respect to Freudian imagery. Lunar signifies Pierrots
obsession with the moon, dark hallucinations and
frustrations (346).
Related Theme: Sprechstimme, that is a technique
between speaking and singing, invented by Schoenberg.
Sprechstimme enables the performer to describe
the poems nightmare climate, distorted,
magnified and haunted imageries (340).
lower pitches and instruments are used in
relation to the poem
chromatic progression in harmony and melody
climactic and dark sound universe.
The Unanswered Question, Ives
The piece begins with false starts.
melodies interrupted by various sounds and irregular
rhythms.
sound bites or fragmented tunes
dance fragments
dissonant tonalities
inclusive of hymns and march tunes.
Music for Strings, Bartok
Written in the form of sonata, the piece
includes folk dance fragments, irregular
rhythms, small melodic bits and unusual
percussion sounds.
Poeme Electronique, Varese
The piece was played with 425 speakers, and
the music was accompanied by Le Corbusiers
design of light and image show.
Music includes pre-recorded concrete sounds
such as random vocal noises, bells, train
noises, and electronically generated sounds.
As such, the piece works like a soundtrack,
inviting the audience to act through it.
Lux Aterna, Ligiti
Written for 16 solo singers and chorus.
Starts with a single pitch; expands upward (with
added higher pitches) and downward (with added

lower pitches); condenses or contracts the pitches

(with canceling some pitches); and occasionally focuses
on one single pitch in the middle (Kerman 377)
As such, Ligeti creates sound clusters that move in
different different directions throughout the piece.